Nishapur

Nishapur (Persian: نیشاپور) or Neyshabur (نیشابور, [ˌnejʃɒːˈbuːɹ] ) is a city in the Central District of Nishapur County, Razavi Khorasan province, Iran, serving as capital of both the county and the district. Nishapur is the second most populous city of the province in the northeast of Iran, situated in a fertile plain at the foot of Binalud Mountain Range. It has been the historic capital of the Western Quarter of Khorasan, the historic capital of the 9th-century Tahirid dynasty, the initial capital of the 11th-century Seljuk Empire, and is currently the capital city of Nishapur County and a historic Silk Road city of cultural and economic importance in Iran and the Khorasan region. Nearby are turquoise mines that have supplied the world with turquoise of the finest and the highest quality for at least two millennia. The city was founded in the 3rd century by Shapur I as a capital city of Sasanian satrapy known as Abarshahr or Nishapur. The city later became the capital of Tahirid dynasty and was reformed by Abdullah Tahir in 830, and later selected as the capital of Seljuk dynasty by Tughril in 1037. Nishapur had a territory of 17.6 hectares and 25,000 people in the 6th century, while by the year 1000, the population of the city was about 336,000 people with the territory of 1,680 hectares. From the Abbasid era to the Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia and Eastern Iran, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center within the Islamic world. Nishapur, along with Merv, Herat and Balkh, was one of the four great cities of Khorasan and one of the greatest cities of the Old World in the Islamic Golden Age with strategic importance, a seat of governmental power in the eastern section of caliphates, a dwelling place for...